Brew-haha frothing over after Philly bar raids

In this Wednesday, March 10, 2010 photo, bartender Sean McGuinness pauses while working at the Resurrection Ale House, Wednesday, March 10, 2010, in Philadelphia. An anonymous complaint that the Philadelphia bar was selling beer that has not been properly licensed with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board led to raids on three upscale bars last week in which police confiscated three quarter-kegs and 317 bottles of beer that believed to have not been properly registered with the state. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
— AP

In this Wednesday, March 10, 2010 photo, bartender Sean McGuinness pauses while working at the Resurrection Ale House, Wednesday, March 10, 2010, in Philadelphia. An anonymous complaint that the Philadelphia bar was selling beer that has not been properly licensed with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board led to raids on three upscale bars last week in which police confiscated three quarter-kegs and 317 bottles of beer that believed to have not been properly registered with the state. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
/ AP

In this Wednesday, March 10, 2010 photo, a man walks past the Resurrection Ale House in Philadelphia. An anonymous complaint that the Philadelphia bar was selling beer that has not been properly licensed with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board led to raids on three upscale bars last week in which police confiscated three quarter-kegs and 317 bottles of beer that believed to have not been properly registered with the state. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)— AP

In this Wednesday, March 10, 2010 photo, a man walks past the Resurrection Ale House in Philadelphia. An anonymous complaint that the Philadelphia bar was selling beer that has not been properly licensed with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board led to raids on three upscale bars last week in which police confiscated three quarter-kegs and 317 bottles of beer that believed to have not been properly registered with the state. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
/ AP

PHILADELPHIA 
A real brew-haha has beer lovers in the City of Brotherly love frothing over with anger.

To one side, the suds uproar is borne out of typographical errors, hard-to-spell beer names and archaic, Prohibition-era liquor laws. To the other, it's a simple matter of making sure bars and beer manufacturers aren't scamming the system.

It all came to a head after an anonymous complaint that a Philadelphia bar was selling beer that had not been properly licensed with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, an agency created after Prohibition in 1933 to regulate the sale of alcohol.

That tip led to raids last week at three upscale bars, where police confiscated three quarter-kegs and 317 bottles of beer that were not believed to have been properly registered with the state. Raids at Memphis Taproom in Philadelphia's Kensington section, Local 44 in west Philadelphia and Resurrection Ale House downtown caught the couple who run them by surprise.

"I feel like there are a lot of typographical errors that caused this," said Leigh Maida, who received calls from staff around midday March 4. "The laws were really developed before there were so many kinds of beers."

Under Pennsylvania liquor law, manufacturers of malt or brewed beverages must pay a $75 annual fee to register each brand. About 2,800 beers are now registered in the state; manufacturers submit applications to the liquor board, showing the agreement they have with the wholesaler.

In the recent raids, a tipster contacted the state, saying the bar owners were selling unregistered beers, said Sgt. William La Torre, commanding officer of the Philadelphia office of the Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, which enforces the liquor laws. Statewide, police say there are typically fewer than 10 complaints a year about unregistered beer.

Maida and her husband, Brendan Hartranft, don't know who filed the complaint. They believe the problem largely results from archaic liquor laws and misunderstandings about formidable beer names that often get abbreviated.

The liquor code, they say, is no match for beers with names like Dogfish Head Raison d'etre and a dark ale called 't smisje BBBorgoundier. The rigid code also isn't able to account for when they abbreviate Allagash White Beer to "Allagash Wit" on their menus.

At one bar, Maida had a beer listed as "de dolle Oebier gran reserva;" the beer itself was "de dolle oerbier," but the police had it spelled as "de rolle oebier," she said.

"The laws were really developed before there were so many kinds of beers," she said.

Pennsylvania has some of the strictest liquor laws in the country, funneling the sale of wine and spirits through state-run liquor stores and regulating the sale of beer mostly through the state's approximately 1,100 licensed distributorships.

Distributors can only sell kegs and cases of beer; bars, restaurants and delis, which must apply for liquor licenses from the state Liquor Control Board, can sell six-packs. In recent years, a small number of grocery stores and markets also have gotten licenses to sell beer.